19 December 2013

Enhanced Kanban Task Manager In Two Outlook Versions

Kanban Task Manager for Outlook has moved the traditional kanban board into Outlook, which gives many advantages. Now we will soon come with an update of the workgroup version, and as we have received many requests for it we will also release a single version.

Custom parameterKanban Task Manager shows subject, responsible, project and some of the description text on each task on the virtual kanban board in Outlook. In addition to that you may opt to display the priority on the task. The responsible, the project and the priority are also the parameters you can filter the tasks by, separately or in combination.

In next version of Kanban Task Manager for Outlook, it will also be possible to add a custom parameter. Just write a name for it in the settings, and a new list for this parameters will be created.

Here you can fill out the values users should select from in the additional dropdown that will be added to each new task. The value of the custom parameter will be shown on the task, and it will be possible to filter by it.

Hide what you don't need
When an employee has left the company or a project is finished, you don't need those entries in the Kanban Task Manager settings anymore.

You might however want to keep them in the statistics, and that is impossible if you delete them. We will therefore make it possible to hide projects and responsibles from the kanban board.

We will do the same for phases. In next version you can to hide one or more of the Kanban Task Manager phases from the virtual kanban board, for example the finished phase.

Even tasks can be hidden instead of deleted. The delete button will from next version be a "close" button, and the administrator can decide in the settings what this button should do. It can either delete tasks, as before, or move them to a specified phase. Maybe to a hidden "Finished" phase?

Details pane and drag within phases
Another new feature is a details pane, that will show more of the text when you right click a tas. We will also make it possible to drag tasks within phases and not only between them. The order within the phase will be kept, no matter how you move your tasks around!

Free upgrades
Upgrades are free for subscribers, so if you are already using Kanban Task Manager for Outlook you will get it all these new features without any extra costs.

Example data
You cannot evaluate Kanban Task Manager without some data in it, and even if it is easy to paste lists of responsibles and projects into the settings it takes some time to create tasks to test the solution with. We will therefore give an option to create example data for the evaluation.

Single version
Soon after the update of Kanban Task Manager for Outlook has been published, we will also release Kanban Task Manager Single. It will work inside Outlook and use Outlook tasks, just like the Workgroup version, and it will have the same features. But as it will be intended for one person only, there will be no sharing of data.

I hope to come back to you in January and tell you about the release!
Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions